27 pages • 54 minutes read
Hisaye YamamotoSeventeen Syllables
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1949A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Numbers of Haiku
Many aspects of the haiku function as a motif throughout the story. For instance, numbers that are associated with the rules of haiku recur in meaningful character details. The number three evokes the three-line structure of the poem but also Ume Hanazono’s life span, which was “very brief—perhaps three months at most” (9). One of the Hayano daughters boasts about purchasing a new coat for only 17 dollars, invoking the story’s title and the number of syllables in haiku. Most notably, Tome’s stillborn son “would be seventeen now” (18). As Tome explains to Rosie in the first scene, “she must pack all her meaning into seventeen syllables only” (8), and this challenge maps onto the 17 years of Tome’s grief, transforming her life into one long poem. Each instance of a three or 17 in the story, then, emphasizes both the briefness of certain feelings and the challenge of expressing oneself when one’s language is restricted—whether due to poetic form, the expectations of a wife to be silent, or because Tome’s daughter lacks the Japanese fluency needed to understand the full message Tome wants to deliver to her.
Plants and Produce
Throughout “Seventeen Syllables,” Yamamoto returns again and again to the metaphor of a plant’s lifespan. This motif is introduced with Tome’s “blossoming pen name, Ume Hanazono.” The word Hanazono means “flower garden” in Japanese, and Ume refers to a kind of fruit tree, like a plum or apricot, that blossoms in spring for three months—the same length of time that Tome writes haiku. Meanwhile, the Hayashi family’s livelihood depends on the harvesting of fruit after the flowers fall away, then replanting the fruit’s seeds to start the process over again. Rosie, for instance, eats tomato seeds in the packing shed. These metaphors emphasize the fleeting nature of Tome’s freedom and Rosie’s innocence, and they also suggest that the death of one era leads to the birth of another. This might refer to Rosie’s loss of innocence and entry into womanhood, the promise that Ume Hanazono will one day return, or the potential of leaving behind the trauma of Japan—represented by the issei generation and Tome in particular—for a new life in the United States.
Hiroshige Print
When the haiku editor of the Mainichi Shimbun, Mr. Kuroda, gives the ukiyo-e print by Hiroshige to Tome, the prize functions, though briefly, as a symbol of her achievement. It validates her preoccupation with haiku during these three months on a personal level and as an artist. It also temporarily rebuilds Tome’s relationship to Japan and satisfies her need to shepherd traditional Japanese culture into the United States. Ukiyo-e is a uniquely Japanese art form, like haiku, and Hiroshige Utagawa is one of the most famous ukiyo-e artists from the Edo period, lasting from 1603 to 1867. The print thus symbolizes both the survival of Japanese culture in America and evidence for Tome that she has successfully contributed to her culture’s preservation. When Mr. Hayashi destroys the print, and even when Rosie figuratively reduces the print in her description of it as “a pleasant picture” (17), that symbol becomes the reverse. Traditional Japanese art forms seem doubly endangered, and Tome can no longer see herself as a shepherd for their heritage.
